Visiting Speaker: Mark Neal

Thursday (today) 2:00pm
Room 78-421 (Level 4 GP South).

Mark Neal is from UNSW.  Below is an abstract from Mark's paper. The talk should appeal to those interested in optimisation of complex systems.


Optimisation of a Whole-farm Model

The central aim of this project is to improve dairy farmer’s strategic (long term)
decisions. The process involved the integration of an economics component into an
existing whole-farm model, followed by utility based optimisation using a genetic
algorithm. The optimisation is first conducted with a single objective function
assuming perfect capital and labour markets for a farmer with two investment
alternatives: a dairy farm or risk-free asset. The problem is then broadened to a
stochastic dominance problem, where the assumption of perfect capital markets is
relaxed. Emphasis is then placed on post-optimisation analysis, especially through
visual approaches.




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